


Just Like She’s Walking on a Wire

by damnslippyplanet



Category: Leverage
Genre: F/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 17:45:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6088753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damnslippyplanet/pseuds/damnslippyplanet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Parker works the problems. She’s doing what she’s supposed to do. So why can’t she work this one?</p><p>She’s pretty sure it’s because Eliot isn’t supposed to be the problem. He’s supposed to be what solves the problems. He’s not supposed to be why she can’t sleep, even when Hardison tugs her closer and says, “Babe, you need to sleep. It’s gonna be fine. He’ll come back. You know he wouldn’t just leave for good.”</p><p>But she doesn’t know it. Not in her bones, not in the place in her gut that tells her when it’s time to jump. That thing in her gut tells her she missed something, even if she doesn’t know what.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Like She’s Walking on a Wire

Working the problems is Parker’s job now. Nate had called it rotating the pieces but it’s not like that, not really. It’s more like getting ready to jump. Doing the calculations, choosing the gear, checking it all over and then again, not because she needs to but because Hardison makes that face at her less if she checks again and somewhere along the way that became important. And then just sitting still and quiet and waiting. 

She waits for her gut to tell her  _ go ahead and jump _ or  _ wait and check again. _ She doesn’t always know why she needs to check again, but If her gut says to she does. If it tells her  _ you haven’t solved the problem yet _ then she starts again. She does it again until she gets it right and  _ knows _ it’s right, and then she can jump with utter fearlessness.  

She’s getting good at it: working the problems, being in charge of the team. There was that thing with the bank and then the other thing with the truck, because sometimes it’s still a little too much to have everything coming at her at once instead of just her own piece of the con. But they paid for the truck and then some, and she’s already figured out how they’re going to make the bank job right once the heat around that dies down a little.  And the third job went perfectly. 

She worked the problems. She’s doing what she’s supposed to do. So why can’t she work this one?

She’s pretty sure it’s because Eliot isn’t supposed to be the problem. He’s supposed to be what  _ solves  _ the problems. He’s not supposed to be why she can’t sleep, even when Hardison tugs her closer and says, “Babe, you need to sleep. It’s gonna be fine. He’ll come back. You know he wouldn’t just leave for good.”

But she doesn’t know it. Not in her bones, not in the place in her gut that tells her when it’s time to jump. That thing in her gut tells her she missed something, even if she doesn’t know what.

She thinks maybe she doesn’t know anything about Eliot at all anymore. Because she’d been so sure, two days ago. The third job had gone perfectly, and they’d stayed up maybe too late celebrating with Hardison’s latest beer, which even Eliot admits is not terrible. 

It had been good. They’d been happy. There had been a  _ moment, _ there in the kitchen. 

Parker’s not always good at understanding  _ moments _ when they happen, but she’d been pretty sure about that one. She might not have been sure if it had been a new idea, this thing with Eliot, but it’s not new. She and Hardison have talked about it before, usually late at night when things are darker and warmer and safer. About what Eliot is to them, and what he isn’t. They’ve discussed the way he looks at them both sometimes when he thinks they don’t see, as if he’d like to bridge the gap between  _ is _ and  _ could be. _

It’s not that any of them  _ need  _ to take that last step or to close that last gap, precisely.  They could go on just like they are. They’re family already, with or without acting on that thing that sparks unacknowledged between the three of them sometimes. But wouldn’t it be even better if they did?  Parker and Hardison have been pretty sure for a while now that it would be better.

And so there’d been that moment. Late and loud and more than a little drunk, fizzy with the joy of their first perfect job as a trio, as much as with the beer. 

Eliot had decided after his fourth beer that maybe this batch was actually pretty good, and maybe it would be a good  _ sauce, _ and then he’d started mumbling about bread pudding and they’d lost him to the lure of the kitchen. Parker and Hardison had stayed where they were, sprawled on the couch.  They’d had every intention of following in a minute because Eliot cooking is like a one-man Shakespeare performance and not to be missed. But they stayed, just for a minute, just long enough for Parker to wriggle around to face Hardison and ask, “Alec? Is this the right time?”

Hardison hadn’t looked entirely sure and maybe that’s where it went wrong, when he hadn’t said yes right away. But it had only taken a moment and then the doubt had cleared from his face and he’d said, “Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”

Check and re-check, and Parker had taken that as a green light to jump. 

They’d followed Eliot into the kitchen and let him assign them jobs.  Parker got to stirring and Hardison to cubing bread, while Eliot fussed and mumbled about some other kind of butter that they really should have and he’d bring over next time.

The caramel-beer sauce ended up being delicious. Parker had watched it very seriously and stirred whenever it got too bubbly. But it never got onto the bread or into the oven, because at some point in there the  _ moment _ had happened and things got a little blurry. 

She kissed Eliot first; she’s pretty sure about that. She’d felt his heart thrumming under her hand as it rested against his chest, and because Parker knows something about a fight or flight instinct, her own heart had raced in sympathy. But it had been good, really good, a hint of sweet caramel still lingering in her mouth from where Eliot had fed it to her and then his own taste underneath that.

She remembers Eliot leaning into her for a long heated moment and then spinning away in a near-panic, babbling some sort of incoherent and unnecessary apology. She remembers Hardison stopping Eliot in mid-flight with his best calming voice, the one he uses on both his jumpy teammates, and saying something like, “Eliot, keep breathing, man. It’s okay. We don’t want you to go anywhere.”  

In the end It had been a little closer to catching a skittish half-feral puppy than to a seduction, but that’s okay. Hardison had been that kind of steady for her at first, she’s pretty sure, and now they can both be that for Eliot. Or that’s what she’d thought that night. They’d eventually gotten Eliot to the bedroom, and convinced him they really wanted him there, and then it had just been  _ good, _ warm and aching and right. 

Parker had thought it might be overwhelming the way that first job she’d been completely in charge of had been overwhelming. Too many things happening at once, hard to keep track of. All those extra hands, and wouldn’t there always be an odd person out?  Someone stuck in the cold on the edge of the bed?  It probably would have been awkward with anyone else. But not with Hardison and Eliot, as it had turned out. Six hands turned out to be just about right.  No one got left out; everyone ended up warm and sated and breathless.

They’d had to just about sit on Eliot afterwards to get him to stay, sandwiching him in between them, and it had been a little weird to go to sleep resting against someone’s skin other than Hardison’s. More scars; less steady breathing. But Hardison had been right there on the other side of Eliot and they’d both kissed her goodnight so that had been all right, too.

Until they woke up the next morning and Eliot was gone.

Not just gone from bed or even gone from the pub but  _ gone _ gone. Not answering his phone gone. The kind of  _ gone _ that makes Parker ask Hardison for the third or fourth time, “Are you sure it wasn’t us? Did I say the wrong thing? You have to tell me when I make things weird.”

Hardison doesn’t sound like he’s lying, not exactly, but he does sound a little unsure when he says, “Eliot’s got his own stuff to work out but he’ll come back. You know he always comes back.”

She can’t start planning the next job because she doesn’t know how to do what they do without him. She can’t eat the rest of the caramel sauce because it tastes like Eliot kissing her and Eliot’s gone. She steals Hardison’s watch off his wrist just for the distraction, but it takes him hours to notice and that’s how she knows he’s worried too..

They drive by Eliot’s apartment on the third day. Hardison knows where it is - of course he knows - but they’ve never been. Eliot’s never invited them and it feels like invading his privacy just to drive by, much less go inside. But they look for long enough to see that there’s no truck parked outside and no lights on. 

On the fourth day Hardison texts Eliot again:  _ Send up a flare and let us know you’re alive. We’re worried. _

It takes an hour to get a response. Maybe that’s because Eliot’s sleeping or working out or driving, but Parker feels certain in her bones that he’s just been staring at his phone trying to decide whether to answer them at all. It feels awful, like a rope breaking or an ankle turning, like the instant where you know a con’s gone wrong but you don’t know how yet. 

But Eliot does answer, eventually, with:  _ I’m OK. I’m sorry. _

And then he doesn’t answer any further messages. Not Parker’s asking what he’s sorry about, and not Hardison’s saying there’s nothing to be sorry for except the bullshit running-away thing he’s doing right this damn second. 

Another couple of days go by and Parker fidgets at the problem, checking and re-checking, trying to spin and squint at it until it makes sense. She thinks about calling Sophie but this feels like something between the three of them. 

She thinks about the tickle of Eliot’s hair against her stomach, and the sound he’d made the first time Hardison had kissed him, softer than any sound she knew Eliot could make.

It had felt like all the pieces of a lock tumbling into place just right and a door swinging open, and she’d  _ thought _ they’d all felt it together. Maybe she was wrong. 

Thursday night is supposed to be movie night. Eliot’s supposed to make dinner, or sometimes they order Chinese, but they always get enough for three people. It doesn’t feel right to order for two. She curls up with Hardison and they watch  _ Blade Runner _ again because it feels like a good night for an old comfort. Parker tries not to point out too often when she can tell that they’ve swapped in Daryl Hannah’s stunt double, or that  _ she _ can do all of those things with no stunt double needed. She tries to let the problem of Eliot go for a few hours.

On Friday Hardison offers to stay home instead of going off to his guild-raid-war-whatever-thing-with-the-orcs but Parker tells him to go. She can use the quiet to think. 

Once he’s gone, Parker tries to be Nate for a while. Nate would either tell Hardison to track Eliot’s damn phone already, or he’d come up with some clever ruse to lure Eliot back. But that only solves the problem until Eliot leaves again. Parker needs to work the problem in a way that gets Eliot to  _ want _ to come back, which means she needs to understand why he left.

So she tries to be Eliot. “ _ I’m Eliot," _ she says out loud in the empty apartment, feeling a little silly. “I’m Eliot and I just finished a perfect job because Parker is an even better boss than Nate. And I’m making fancy dessert at midnight because that’s what Eliot d-- what I do.”  She goes to stand where Eliot had been standing by the stove, and practices glaring a little the way Eliot does, even though glaring at nothing, at her imaginary-past-self, feels a little silly. 

“I’m Eliot and I’m in a good mood but god forbid I ever admit it. And then Parker kisses me and I...kind of freak out. Why do I freak out?”

She tries to remember what he’d been saying, that protest that Hardison had cut off. Something about sorry. Something about “you guys”, as if it had been Eliot and Parker-and-Hardison, not all three of them together.

And what had she done?  Before the kiss. She’d checked with her stomach and it had said  _ yes. _ And she’d checked with Hardison and he’d said  _ yeah. _ And she’d jumped.

_ Oh. _ She’d jumped without checking with Eliot first. 

Maybe it’s a little like solving a puzzle after all, because she can almost feel things clicking into place in the space behind her eyes. 

It’s the three of them now. When they work and when they watch movies and when they order dinner together and even when Eliot’s being grumpy at them it’s still the three of them. But then at the end of the night Eliot goes home, but she and Hardison already  _ are _ home, and standing in the kitchen being Eliot she suddenly realizes that Eliot must feel left out.

Maybe Eliot doesn’t know that they could be home for him too, if he wanted them to be. Maybe he didn’t understand what they were trying to do. 

She should have checked with him, too. Check, and re-check, and re-check  _ again, _ three times now. A hassle for someone so used to flinging herself into the air and trusting to physics and gravity to take care of her - but maybe she could learn to like being caught by people, not just ropes and pulleys. Maybe she could learn to check three times, just like all the other new things she’s learned.

Or maybe Eliot could learn not to just run away like that, that would also be nice. Parker supposes there are a lot of “maybes” they could try on for size if Eliot would pick up the phone. If he would talk to them. If he would just come _home._

She’s tired of thinking.  She hoists herself up onto the countertop - and if Eliot were here he would tell her to get down, but if he were here none of this would be happening anyway so he can deal with it - and pulls out her phone.

_ can we talk? are you ever coming home?  _ She doesn’t even wait for a response before adding  _ you can ignore me if you want but i’m just gonna text you every 5 minutes all night. if you’re going to be stubborn. _

She bets herself that she’ll have to wait ten minutes for a response but it’s only seven, and she grins in spite of herself at the buzzing phone.

_ Parker, I have stuff to do.  _

_ what stuff? _

_ Stuff. Call Hardison if you’re bored, you know he’ll come home. _

_ not bored. worried. are you mad at us?  _ That gets her enough silence that she has to try again.  _ eliot? don’t be mad. _

Still nothing, and then the phone startles her by ringing instead of buzzing with another text. She offers a “Hey,” and then waits for Eliot to talk. He called; that must be a good sign. She doesn’t want to mess it up by being...well, herself.

He sighs and she can almost  _ see  _ how tired he is through the phone, from the sound alone.  Maybe he’s not sleeping so well either. “I’m not mad, Parker. I’m just away for a little while.”

Something in Parker’s chest clutches tighter than it should. Hardison had said Eliot would come back. “Away where? For how long?”

“Not sure yet. Just, a while. Long enough for you guys to sort out whatever you need to sort out, and I’ll keep out of the way.”

Parker blinks and wrinkles her forehead slightly. She’s pretty sure that of the three of them, the one who’s run away from home might be the one with things to sort out. “Who’s going to help  _ you  _ sort things out?” 

“There’s nothing for me to figure out.”  Eliot’s muttering so low and growly Parker can barely hear him. “I overstepped, I know that. I’m not an idiot. I’m sorry. I’ll stay away a while and then we can just pretend it never happened”

Parker doesn’t  _ want _ to pretend it never happened, and she can’t decide if she’s sad or mad or frustrated or any of the other emotions that she’s pretty good at telling apart these days, but that sometimes blur together in a way that stops making sense beyond just  _ hurting. _ “We need you  _ here, _ Eliot,” is what she ends up saying, somehow managing not to yell even though that sort of confused hurt makes her want to yell.

“It’ll be a couple of weeks before we can tackle the bank again, right?  I’ll come back by then.” 

The thought of a couple more weeks like this feels unbearable.

“You’re an idiot.”  Okay, so maybe she’s figured out what she’s feeling, and maybe it’s mad after all. “You  _ left. _ Everything was perfect - the job, and the three of us, and everything - and then you  _ left. _ You’re not supposed to leave us. You  _ promised." _ She’s yelling a little bit after all, or at least her voice flew high and loud on the last word without her permission.

“Parker. Hey, Parker it’s okay…”  It’s Eliot’s soothing nonsense, meant to calm her when she’s flying apart beyond her own ability to keep it together, when her voice starts to do what it just did. It works when Eliot is actually with her and can touch her arm or look at her, but it doesn’t work on the phone. 

It just doesn’t work and none of it is  _ working _ and all she can manage to say is:

“You didn’t even say goodbye.”

Eliot’s quiet for so long she thinks he might have hung up, and then he says: “I was going to. Look, I chickened out, okay?  I woke up and you guys were still asleep and I thought about making breakfast and trying to tough it out until you could wake up and be embarrassed and hungover and let me down easy and I just...couldn’t.”  

It’s the most words Eliot has said so far, so she keeps her mouth shut and doesn’t interrupt, but it’s hard. She has to bite her tongue. Actually literally bite it. Because apparently Eliot really doesn’t have any idea what any of it was about or what it meant to her and Hardison, and they’re going to have to have a real conversation about it. A Feelings Conversation. Which she doesn’t enjoy any more than Eliot does.

“Eliot.” She rolls her eyes at the ceiling. “Alec’s going to need to hear this too and I think you might actually die if we make you say it more than once. So can you stop now and just come home?  We need you to come home.”

It’s not so much an actual word Eliot makes as a strangled little sound, something like a sigh or a frustrated grunt. “I don’t need to come all the way back for you to tell me I fucked up.”

“ _ Eliot. _ Shut  _ up." _ He does, to his credit. “Nothing happened that Alec and I didn’t want to happen. If you didn’t want it, then we owe you an apology, so come home and we’ll apologize and you can tell us how to fix it. If you did want it, then that’s even better. Come home and no one has to apologize. Just come  _ home, _ okay?”

“I can’t make it all the way back tonight.”  It’s the weary voice of an Eliot who’s given in, at least enough to be coming back, and Parker wonders if she should be a little frightened at how her heart leaps. 

“We’re not going anywhere. Come home tomorrow. We’ll figure this all out. We’ll forget the whole thing if you want. We’ll make it so you don’t have to run away anymore, okay?”  

Eliot mutters something she can’t quite catch, but she’s pretty sure it was something about his extensive experience with torture and how this might be worse. It really might be, but Parker’s not going to let on because she’s in charge now and that means sometimes she has to be the one who gets the job done even when the job is Having Feelings. 

So she just says, “Promise you’ll come home tomorrow, Eliot. Okay?”

And he does, and then there’s not much more to say. Or there’s everything to say but not like this, not on the phone, not without Hardison. Because before they jump again, Parker’s going to make sure everyone’s checked and triple-checked and ready to go.  All together, all the way down.

So she says goodnight, and Eliot says goodnight, and Parker remembers what kissing him goodnight and watching him kiss Hardison goodnight had been like, but she puts that thought away for another day.

She hangs up and closes her eyes and listens to her gut for a minute to see what it has to tell her. She feels: nervous, like there’s going to be a test she hasn’t studied for. Happy, because Eliot’s talking now even if he’s hating it. Excited, because she gets to tell Hardison that Eliot’s coming home. Proud of herself, because even if the problem isn’t quite worked yet, she thinks she sees all the pieces now and how they’re going to fit together. She just needs to get them all in the same room, and let the dials spin until they fall into place like they always do, when the three of them work a problem together.

Parker takes a deep breath and opens her eyes and picks up the phone again to send Hardison a text.  _ i talked to eliot. he’s coming home tomorrow.  _

It takes a few minutes for a response, probably because Hardison’s in the middle of killing a dragon or something, but it makes her smile when it arrives.  _ You are a genius. Are you okay? Do you need me to come home now? _

_ i’m good. eliot’s kind of mixed up but we can talk about it in the morning. play your orc thing. _

_ I love you. _

_ i love you too _

She puts the phone aside and decides she feels better enough to try that caramel sauce again after all. There’s some ice cream and she ends up making a bowl that’s more sauce than ice cream, but she puts some chopped nuts on top and that’s protein and there’s a jar of maraschino cherries, so it’s practically healthy.  The sauce tastes good reheated now - it still tastes almost as much like kisses as it does like itself, but that doesn’t bother her anymore.  

She takes the bowl into the bedroom and tucks herself into bed with their tablet, and pulls up the schematics for the bank job they still need to make right. They’ll have beefed up the security since these plans were drawn, but the basic layout will be the same and she can start there.  Next week she’ll send Hardison in to get some information on the changes; he wasn’t in the bank when it all went south before, they won’t know his face.

Parker makes herself a comfortable little nest of blankets and settles in with ice cream and vault diagrams, and she waits for her family,  _ all  _ of her family, to come home to her.

**Author's Note:**

> Or: I thought to myself, self, what if you spent your birthday writing yourself a really self-indulgent fic? And then I thought to myself, but wait, wouldn't it be more fun to write an indulgent fic for my darling friend bydaybreak instead? Since I've been promising her to try my hand at Leverage fic forever?
> 
> And so here we are. Be patient with me if the voices aren't quite right, I'll get better with practice.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Greater Chance of Survival](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7615084) by [flawsinthevoodoo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flawsinthevoodoo/pseuds/flawsinthevoodoo)
  * [[Podfic of] Just Like She’s Walking on a Wire](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13169148) by [knight_tracer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/knight_tracer/pseuds/knight_tracer)




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